ABSTRACT
Homeric Epic may seem to have been dead over 250 years ago, in verse at least, in English at least. Yet one of the greatest works of twentieth-century literature in any language is a kind of Homeric epic, albeit in prose. Omeros is profoundly Homeric and undoubtedly epic. Yet Derek Walcott himself has repeatedly denied that his poem is epic and has depreciated its affinities with the Iliad and the Odyssey. The central character is Achille (French pronunciation), a bighearted but desperately poor fisherman. Philoctete is a friend of both the rivals. He was a fisherman too until his shin was injured by a rusty anchor and the stinking ulcer would not heal. One could hardly expect a Professor of English at Boston University in 1990 to have a relationship with his first-person narrator which is narratologically unproblematic. Homer also touches Maud Plunkett with mortality, though in her case the interaction is with the Odyssey.
